The Second Amendment Comes Before the Supreme Court: The Issues and the Arguments

The United States Supreme Court has decided only one significant
case involving the Second Amendment, and that was almost 70 years
ago. Next week, the Court will return to the issue when it hears
arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller. This is a test
case brought by a D.C. special police officer who carries a gun
while on duty. Under D.C.'s extremely restrictive gun control laws,
he is forbidden to keep a handgun, or an operable rifle or shotgun,
in his home.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that these
laws violate the Second Amendment. The court concluded that
handguns are lineal descendants of founding-era weapons and are
still in common use today, so they may not be banned; the court
also held that D.C.'s requirement that guns be stored in a
mechanically disabled condition is unconstitutional because it
prevents them from being used for self-defense.1 The Supreme Court is
now reviewing that decision.

The parties presenting arguments next week offer three different
interpretations of the meaning of the Second Amendment. D.C.'s
argument--that the Second Amendment protects a right to arms only
in service of a government-organized militia--does not stand up to
historical analysis or textual scrutiny. Heller's position--that
the Amendment establishes an individual right to keep ordinary
weapons for self protection--is sound but not persuasively argued.
And the Bush Administration's position--recognizing an individual
right but leaving the government with some large and undefined
power to curtail the right--is dangerously vague and legally
weak.

Careful textual analysis, along with the relevant historical
context, yields a remarkably clear, sensible, and workable answer
to the question presented in this case. The Amendment protects an
individual right to keep operable firearms for self-defense, which
cannot be taken away by federal law. D.C.'s effort to disarm the
residents of that city is unconstitutional.

From Miller to
Heller

The Second Amendment says: "A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In United States
v. Miller (1939), its only significant case interpreting the
meaning of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court reviewed a
federal statute prohibiting the interstate transportation of
unregistered short-barreled shotguns. The Court's opinion, however,
is ambiguous about the Amendment's meaning and scope. The crucial
passage says:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession
or use of a [short-barreled] shotgun at this time has some
reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well
regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment
guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly
it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of
the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to
the common defense.

D.C.'s gun control statutes forbid almost all civilians to
possess handguns and require other firearms to be stored unloaded
and mechanically disabled. The question before the Court is whether
these laws violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who
are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia but wish to
keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their
homes.

D.C.'s Argument in Favor of Upholding
the Statutes

D.C.'s principal contention is that the Second Amendment
protects a right to arms only in service of a government-organized
militia. Its only effect, then, is to stop Congress from preempting
state militia laws that give individuals a right to keep and bear
arms while serving in an organized state militia.2

D.C. argues that this conclusion is dictated by the language of
the Second Amendment, which is filled with military terminology and
refers expressly to the militia without any hint about private uses
of firearms. D.C. reinforces its textual argument with historical
materials showing (1) that the Amendment was adopted in response to
fears that the new federal government might pursue tyrannical aims
by disarming the state militias and (2) that there was no
discussion of the use of arms for private purposes anywhere in the
Amendment's legislative history.

This argument is untenable.

First, it implies that the Second Amendment substantially
amended a provision of the Constitution (Article I, section 8, cl.
16) that gives Congress almost unfettered authority to regulate the
militia. There is no historical evidence at all to support this
conclusion.

Second, a right of the states to organize and arm their
own militias as they see fit conflicts with another constitutional
provision (Article I, section 10, cl. 3) that prohibits the states
from keeping troops without the consent of Congress. Once again,
there is no evidence that the Second Amendment was meant to repeal
this clause of the Constitution.

Third, the Supreme Court has consistently concluded that
the federal government has extremely broad powers to preempt state
militia laws and has never suggested that the Second Amendment has
any relevance at all to the constitutionality of federal laws
preempting state militia regulations.

D.C. also argues that Miller is consistent with its claim
that the right to keep arms applies only to those serving in an
organized militia. But Miller said no such thing and never
even suggested that it might be relevant whether the defendants in
that case were members of any militia.

In addition to its main argument, D.C. defends its statutes on
two alternative and independent grounds. First, the city argues
that the Second Amendment's purpose is to protect the states from
the federal government so that it has no application in a federal
enclave like the District of Columbia. This argument assumes that
the term "the people" in the Second Amendment really means "the
state governments," which is both implausible and bereft of
historical support.

Second, D.C. argues that if the Court concludes that the
Constitution protects a private right to arms, its handgun ban
should be upheld as a reasonable effort to protect the public
against several unique dangers posed by these weapons. In a related
argument, D.C. defends as a reasonable safety regulation its
requirement that other guns be stored unloaded and mechanically
disabled (either disassembled or secured with a trigger lock).
According to the city, its laws contain an implicit exception
permitting civilians to unlock their guns if an intruder suddenly
appears in their homes.

This argument was concocted for the occasion. D.C. never before
suggested the existence of a "sudden intruder" exception, which in
any event would have little practical significance if the victim
has to wait until a criminal appears in her bedroom at night before
she can start unlocking her gun and loading it with ammunition.

Heller's Argument for Declaring D.C.'s
Laws Unconstitutional

Heller argues that the Second Amendment's text plainly refers to
a pre-existing individual right and contends that this right is
necessary for free people to guarantee their security by acting as
a militia.3 He emphasizes that the text does not say that
fostering a well-regulated militia is the sole purpose of the right
to arms. Heller also presents historical evidence that American
colonists fought the British using militias that were well
regulated without being regulated by the government. According to
Heller, "should our Nation suffer tyranny again, preservation of
the right to keep and bear arms would enhance the people's ability
to act as militia in the manner practiced by the Framers."

If this argument is correct, it could mean that Americans have a
constitutional right to keep arms that would be useful against an
army controlled by a tyrannical government. That would seem to
include standard infantry rifles like the M-16 and other military
arms.

Heller does not draw this conclusion in his brief. Relying on
Miller, Heller maintains that the Second Amendment only
protects those weapons (1) that civilians can be expected to use
for ordinary lawful purposes and (2) that would be useful in
militia service. Handguns meet both prongs of this test, and he
concludes that the government therefore may not ban them outright,
although he adds that "[t]here is no justification to limit the
Second Amendment's protection to arms that have military
utility."

Miller is ambiguous in several respects, but the Second
Amendment test it articulated is whether the weapon is "part of the
ordinary military equipment or [one whose] use could
contribute to the common defense." Miller did mention
that eighteenth-century militiamen were ordinarily expected to
report for duty armed with weapons "of the kind in common use at
the time," but the Court did not indicate that this referred to
anything other than what Miller's test called "ordinary
military equipment." In the twenty-first century (unlike the
eighteenth), civilians do not commonly use standard military
equipment like M-16s.4

Heller also cites historical materials supporting the conclusion
that the Second Amendment protects a right to keep firearms for
private purposes such as self defense, and this evidence has been
amplified by several amici with arguments leading to this
conclusion.

Finally, Heller argues that if the Court rejects his proposed
test, the appropriate constitutional test for laws regulating the
right to keep arms would be strict scrutiny, which requires that
certain fundamental rights may not be infringed unless they are
narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.

The Bush Administration's Proposed
Non-Decision

The Bush Administration filed an amicus curiae brief
urging that the case be remanded for further consideration by the
lower courts.5 Consistent with a 2004 opinion from the
Justice Department's Office of legal Counsel, the Administration
agrees with Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual
right to possess firearms for self-protection. The Administration,
however, argues that the Court of Appeals applied the wrong legal
test when it adopted a categorical rule under which handguns may
not be banned. According to this amicus brief, the Court of
Appeals' test (which prevents the government from banning guns that
are descended from founding-era weapons and that have military
utility) would cast constitutional doubt on important federal laws,
including the current machinegun statute.

The Administration also rejects Heller's proposed test
(categorical protection for weapons commonly used by civilians and
potentially useful in militia service), as well as Heller's
alternative argument that strict scrutiny should be applied.
Instead, the Administration urges the Court to adopt a more relaxed
intermediate scrutiny approach derived from the field of election
law. Under certain cases in that field, the government is permitted
to impose reasonable restrictions on First Amendment rights in
order to serve important regulatory interests. Because the
government is authorized to regulate the militia, just as it is
authorized to regulate elections, the Administration suggests that
these cases provide an appropriate analogy. The Administration goes
on to argue that this new test should be applied in the first
instance by the lower courts, which might need to consider
additional legal or factual issues, such as whether D.C.'s laws
permit its residents to load their weapons and reassemble or unlock
them in response to a sudden intrusion.

This legal argument is little more than sleight of hand. D.C.'s
laws plainly forbid residents of the city from keeping an operable
firearm in their homes for self-protection. In any case, the
Supreme Court does not need the assistance of the lower courts to
interpret these laws. Furthermore, if the Court were to adopt the
Administration's proposed intermediate scrutiny test, the Justices
would be better situated than the lower courts to apply that
extremely vague test to this case. If the Second Amendment protects
an individual right to have weapons for self-protection, as the
Administration says it does, D.C.'s ban on all operable firearms
must be unconstitutional under any meaningful level or type of
scrutiny. The Supreme Court already has all the facts it needs to
decide whether or not the Second Amendment protects such a right.6

The Original Meaning of the Second
Amendment

In an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Second
Amendment Foundation, I argue that the Court should take a
different approach to the case.7

The test suggested in Miller is unworkable when applied
to modern gun control statutes. Miller asked whether the gun
at issue in that case was "part of the ordinary military equipment
or [one whose] use could contribute to the common defense." This
test points directly toward protection of standard-issue infantry
rifles like the fully automatic M-16 and might even be read to
include more lethal weapons like rocket launchers. The
ambiguous opinion in Miller suggested this test but did not
clearly adopt it, and the Court should decline to extend
Miller's suggestion beyond the facts of that case, as it
often does when language in a prior opinion seems to point in an
unacceptable direction.

Instead, the Court should focus on the original meaning of the
Second Amendment, whose purpose is to prevent Congress from using
its Article I authorities, including its authority to regulate the
militia, to disarm American citizens.

The text of the Second Amendment does not imply that the right
to arms is confined in any way to militia-related purposes. The
most significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is
that its preamble ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State...") is an absolute phrase. Such
constructions are grammatically independent of the rest of the
sentence and do not qualify any word in the operative clause to
which they are appended. The usual function of absolute
constructions is to convey some information about the circumstances
surrounding the statement in the main clause.

Another very significant grammatical feature of the Second
Amendment is that the operative clause ("...the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed") is a command.
Because nothing in that command is grammatically qualified by the
prefatory assertion, the operative clause has the same meaning that
it would have had if the preamble had been omitted or even if the
preamble were demonstrably false.

Consider a simple example. Suppose that a college dean
announces: "The teacher being ill, class is cancelled." Nothing
about the dean's prefatory statement, including its truth or
falsity, can qualify or modify the operative command. If the
teacher called in sick to watch a ball game, the cancellation of
the class remains unaffected. If someone misunderstood a phone
message and inadvertently misled the dean into thinking the teacher
would be absent, the dean's order is not thereby modified.

The Second Amendment's grammatical structure is identical, and
so are the consequences. Whatever a well-regulated militia may be,
or even if such a thing no longer exists, the right of the people
to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed." What's more,
whether or not such a militia can contribute to the security of a
free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms remains
unaffected. Indeed, even if it could be proved beyond all doubt
that disarming the people is necessary to the security of a
free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms would
remain unchanged.

Undoubtedly, new information or changed opinions about the
preamble's assertion might suggest the need to issue a new command.
If, for example, the dean discovered that the teacher wasn't going
to be absent after all, he might make a new announcement reversing
his earlier decision. Similarly, if the American people came to
believe that civilian disarmament laws were necessary to promote
public safety, Congress or the state legislatures might initiate a
repeal of the Second Amendment under Article V. In both cases, a
new command would be needed because the truth or falsity of the
preamble's assertion cannot alter the original, operative command.
It is true, of course, that a grammatically absolute phrase--like
countless other forms of contextual evidence--may sometimes help to
resolve ambiguities in the operative command to which it is
appended; but such contextual evidence cannot change the meaning of
the command.

Another textual indication that the preamble does not limit the
operative language is provided by the Second Amendment's use of
"Militia" and "the people." These are different words with
different meanings. The militia has always been a small subset of
"the people" whose right to keep and bear arms is protected by the
Second Amendment. James Madison, for example, estimated that the
militia comprised about one-sixth of the population when the
Constitution was adopted. Most obviously, women were not part of
the 18th century militia. Women, however, have always been citizens
and thus part of "the people," as the Supreme Court has recognized.
Just as women have always been covered by the First Amendment's
"right of the people" to assemble and petition for redress of
grievances and the Fourth Amendment's "right of the people" to be
secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, women have always
had the same Second Amendment rights as men.

Even if one mistakenly supposed that "the people" referred to in
the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments included only those
citizens with full political rights (thus excluding women), the
militia and the people would not come close to being coextensive
bodies of individuals. Under the 1792 Militia Act, for example, the
militia included large numbers of men who did not have full
political rights, and the law exempted many men who did have full
political rights.

All of this points to another fatal defect in D.C.'s
interpretation of the Second Amendment. The Constitution allows
Congress to exempt everyone from militia duties, as the
Supreme Court has recognized. It would be absurd to think that
Congress could abolish the right of "the people" to keep arms
simply by abolishing the militia. Nor can the right to keep arms be
limited to contexts in which its exercise contributes to the
functioning of an organized militia that Congress is not even
required to maintain.

There must, of course, be some logical relationship between the
Second Amendment's preamble and its operative clause. Focus again
on the language of the Constitution. One obvious way for a militia
to be well regulated is for it to be well trained or well
disciplined as a military organization, and the framers of the
Second Amendment no doubt meant to conjure thoughts of such an
organization. The Second Amendment, however, added absolutely
nothing to Congress's sweeping Article I authority to provide for
military training and discipline. This is significant because there
is another meaning of "well regulated" that is actually more
relevant in this context.

To see why, note that any possible contribution of the Second
Amendment to a well-regulated militia must arise from governmental
inaction (that is, from not adopting regulations that
infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms).
Furthermore, the term "well regulated" need not mean heavily
regulated or more regulated. On the contrary, it is
perfectly possible for the government to engage in excessive
regulation or inappropriate regulation, and such regulations
are just what the Second Amendment forbids.

As its operative clause makes clear, the Second Amendment simply
forbids one kind of inappropriate regulation (among the infinite
possible regulations) that Congress might be tempted to enact under
its sweeping authority to make all laws "necessary and proper" for
executing its Article I militia powers (or perhaps other delegated
powers). What is that one kind of inappropriate regulation?
Disarming the citizens from among whom a traditional militia--a
part-time body of citizens available for emergency military
duties--must be constituted.

Thehistory of the Second Amendment confirms this limited and
indirect--though real--relationship between a well-regulated
militia and the constitutional right to arms. At the Philadelphia
Convention, qualms were repeatedly expressed about the danger of
standing armies in peacetime, along with a preference for
maintaining the traditional militia as an alternative to
professional armies composed of paid troops. It was also
recognized, however, that a traditional militia could not, by
itself, adequately provide for the nation's security, even in
peacetime. Accordingly, the delegates put no significant limits on
federal military authority in the Constitution they proposed.

During the subsequent ratification debates, the massive transfer
of military authority to the federal government became one of the
chief Anti-Federalist complaints. The Federalists who controlled
the First Congress, however, were no more willing than the
Philadelphia Convention had been to curtail federal authority in
this field. As Madison noted when introducing his initial draft of
the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives, he was averse
to reconsidering the principles and substance of the powers given
to the new government, but he was quite prepared to incorporate
provisions for the security of rights to which no one would
object.

Consistent with Madison's view--though not with D.C.'s
interpretation of the Second Amendment--Congress rejected proposals
to put substantive limits on congressional authority over the
militia. What the First Congress was quite willing to do, and what
it did do in the Second Amendment, was to make explicit the utterly
noncontroversial denial of federal power to infringe the right of
the people to keep and bear arms.

When Congress sent the Bill of Rights to the states for
ratification, it described its provisions as "declaratory and
restrictive clauses" meant to prevent misconstruction or abuse of
the Constitution's powers. The Second Amendment has both
declaratory and restrictive elements. The words of praise for the
militia in the Second Amendment are simply a declaration of
respect for the traditional militia system, which might--or, in
practice, might not--provide an alternative to the standing
armies that many citizens feared. That explains both why the
declaratory preamble was included and why the Amendment was
carefully drafted to ensure that the restriction on federal
infringement of the people's right to arms is not dependent on its
actually contributing to the maintenance of a well-regulated
militia.

The Supreme Court has often recognized that the Constitution
contains language whose omission would not have changed the meaning
of the document. Perhaps the best example came from the very same
draftsmen who gave us the Second Amendment. The Tenth Amendment
simply reaffirms what was already established by the original
Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the people." The Court concluded
long ago that the Tenth Amendment changed nothing in the
Constitution and that its purpose was only to allay fears of
federal overreaching. Accordingly, it is not at all anomalous that
the Second Amendment--drafted by the same Congress and adopted at
the same time--includes a reassuring comment about the militia that
was not meant to change or limit the effects of the operative
clause to which it was appended.

Respect for the original meaning of the Second Amendment
requires that its language be applied--faithfully and
appropriately--to contemporary society, which is, in important
respects, quite different from that of two centuries ago. With
respect to the right to arms, the concern that was foremost for the
founding generation--fear of a tyrannical federal government--has
subsided. At the same time, the military power of the government
has become overwhelming, which greatly diminishes, though does not
eliminate, the potential of an armed citizenry to deter
governmental oppression.

Even more important, a significant gap has developed between
civilian and military small arms. Eighteenth century Americans
commonly used the same arms for civilian and military purposes, but
today's infantry and organized militia are equipped with an array
of highly lethal weaponry that civilians do not employ for
self-defense or other lawful purposes. The Constitution does not
require the Supreme Court to blind itself to that reality or to
hold that the civilian population has a right to keep every weapon
that the militia can expect to find useful if called to active
duty.

Nor should the Court blind itself to other contemporary
realities, the most important of which is the problem of criminal
violence and the inability of the government to control it. Rather
than focus exclusively on 18th century comments about maintaining
an armed counterweight to the armies of a potentially tyrannical
federal government, the Court should recognize that the broader
purpose of the Second Amendment emerges readily from the
Constitution's founding principles.

Those founding principles are summed up in the familiar liberal
axioms set out in the Declaration of Independence. In liberal
theory, the most fundamental of all rights is the right of
self-defense. Among the political theorists most often cited by
major American writers during the founding period, there was
unanimous agreement about the centrality of the right of
self-defense. To take just one example, Blackstone said:
"Self-defence therefore, as it is justly called the primary law of
nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the
law of society."

The exchange of rights that constitutes the social contract does
not diminish the central importance of the natural right to
self-defense. Rather, political or legal limitations on the
exercise of that right must be understood as efforts to
enhance the citizens' ability to protect their lives
effectively. For that reason alone, the Second Amendment should be
applied vigorously with respect to governmental restrictions on the
liberty of citizens to defend themselves against the violent
criminals whom the government cannot control.

This corollary to the central premise of liberal political
theory is consistent with evidence about 18th century attitudes.
Blackstone, for example, characterized the English right to arms as
a "public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right
of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society
and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of
oppression." Just as one would expect from the fundamental
principle of liberal theory, Blackstone makes no distinction
between oppression by the government itself and oppression that the
government fails to prevent. If anything, his language seems to
refer more easily to the ineradicable phenomenon of criminal
violence, experienced by all free societies, than to the
extraordinary instances of governmental oppression that call for
armed resistance.

In America, a similarly broad understanding of the purpose of
the right to arms was articulated repeatedly during the founding
period in state constitutions, in proposals for a federal bill of
rights, and by distinguished statesmen. The natural right of
self-defense is the most fundamental right known to liberal theory,
and the Second Amendment is our Constitution's most direct legal
expression of Blackstone's insight that "in vain would [basic
rights such as that of personal security] be declared, ascertained,
and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the [English]
Constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual
enjoyment."

It would not be easy to find a more vivid illustration of
Blackstone's point than the District of Columbia, where every
effort has been made to disarm the citizenry. According to what
Blackstone called "the dead letter of the laws," personal security
must be very well assured in a city where almost nobody except
agents of the government is authorized to possess an operable
firearm. The reality is far different, and nothing in the
Constitution requires the Supreme Court to ignore that reality.

In the 21st century, the most salient purpose of the Second
Amendment is to protect the people's ability to defend themselves
against violent criminals. Accordingly, the District of Columbia
must be required to offer justifications for gun control statutes
that go far beyond fashionable slogans and unsubstantiated appeals
to hypothetical salutary effects on public safety. Any other
approach would trivialize the fundamental right protected by the
Second Amendment.

The D.C. Code unequivocally forbids American citizens to keep an
operable firearm in their own homes for the protection of their own
lives. Under no standard of review that respects the fundamental
nature of the Second Amendment right could this prohibition
possibly be upheld.

A Narrow Decision?

If the Supreme Court accepts D.C.'s principal contention--that
civilians have no constitutional right to possess firearms except
in connection with militia service--the Second Amendment will
essentially become a dead letter. The states might retain a
theoretical right to keep up militia forces at their own expense,
but the federal government has never sought to prevent them from
doing so. Furthermore, if Congress ever wanted to do so, it
presumably could induce the desired abolition of state militias by
offering financial inducements in the form of conditional grants,
just as it has induced states to raise the drinking age to 21 by
threatening to cut off highway funding to those that do not
comply.

If the Court recognizes a right to the private possession and
use of firearms, the significance of the case will depend on how it
defines the nature and scope of the right. D.C.'s laws are so
highly restrictive that a decision upholding them is likely to mean
that virtually any gun control regime will be regarded as the kind
of reasonable regulation that the government is free to adopt. This
would leave the Second Amendment with little practical
significance.

If the Court strikes down D.C.'s regulations (or adopts the Bush
Administration's invitation to remand the case), a great many
important questions are likely to remain open. Because this would
be the first case inhistory in which the federal courts
invalidated a gun control statute under the Second Amendment, the
Court would probably write its opinion narrowly. And because D.C.'s
statute is apparently the most restrictive in the nation, such an
opinion would probably not provide clear guidance to lower courts
faced with challenges to less restrictive statutes.

Another reason to expect that an opinion invalidating D.C.'s
statutes would be narrowly written arises from a question not
directly raised in this case. Originally, the Bill of Rights
affected only federal laws like the one at issue in this case. By
the end of the 20th century, the Supreme Court had applied most
provisions of the Bill of Rights to state (and local) laws as well,
using an "incorporation" doctrine derived from Fourteenth Amendment
substantive due process. During this time, the Court also decided
that a few Bill of Rights provisions do not apply to the state
governments. The Court has never decided whether or not substantive
due process renders the Second Amendment applicable to the state
and local governments.

Except for the regulations at issue in this case, the federal
government has adopted few laws imposing significant restrictions
on civilian access to ordinary firearms. Most of the laws that
might be vulnerable to plausible Second Amendment challenges have
been adopted by state and local governments, and the
"incorporation" issue will undoubtedly be presented to the Court if
it strikes down the federal statutes at issue in this case.

Recognizing this, the Court will probably be cautious about
making definitive statements that could have unforeseen
consequences with respect to a wide variety of statutory schemes
that it has not yet had occasion to examine in detail. But it
should not hesitate to affirm the core right to protect one's home
and family against the criminal predators who pay no attention at
all to disarmament statutes like those at issue in this case.

Nelson Lund, Ph.D., is Patrick Henry
Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at the
George Mason University School of Law.

4 For
another argument that Miller can be read to limit
Second Amendment rights to commonly used civilian weapons,
seeamicus brief of Charles J. Cooper et al.,
on behalf of several former Justice Department officials, in
support of respondents in District of Columbia v. Heller, No.
07-290 (U.S. Supreme Court), pp. 29-33, available at/static/reportimages/EB5DEF62B2A8A7F12539E680CF6AB1BF.pdf.

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